Fifteen Days of Grain Transport

During the Qingli era of the Northern Song dynasty, the front line of the Song-Xia war is in crisis. Shen Li, a low-ranking transport clerk, receives an order that amounts to a death sentence: deliver a thousand dan of military grain from Bianliang to Yanzhou within fifteen days. A single day's delay means execution, with his whole family implicated.

There aren't enough carts or laborers, and every checkpoint along the way is squeezing them for money. Everyone thinks he's doomed, because there's no way the grain can arrive on time.

But Shen Li discovers a fatal loophole in the system: military law determines liability based not on when the grain arrives, but on the date written in the departure register!

As long as the paperwork says, "Not today," the grain has, in the eyes of the law, "not yet departed," and he can't be held responsible for a delay.

So this lowly clerk, struggling to survive in the cracks of power, takes up an old transport ledger that nobody ever reads and uses the system's most basic rules to take on everyone along the route who wants him dead.

Checkpoint demanding a bribe? Use the "route mileage" to pin down responsibility for the delay!

Warehouse clerk making things difficult? Turn the tables with the "receiving regulations"!

Superior trying to force a confession? Survive against all odds with a "revised departure date"!

A fifteen-day countdown to life or death, and an intense battle of wits between an ordinary man and a massive bureaucratic machine. The grain can arrive late, but the date on the paperwork must never be late!